Nitronic Redemption
by Captiosus
Summary: After C.L.U. is de-rezzed, Tron is appalled and depressed at what he did as Rinzler, and seeks to redeem himself. When the CORE Guardian in Nitronic City is infected by C.L.U.'s remnant, Tron decides to bring C.L.U. down once and for all. Oneshot


**Nitronic Redemption**

Summary: After C.L.U. is de-rezzed, Tron is appalled and depressed at what he did as Rinzler, and seeks to redeem himself. When the CORE Guardian in Nitronic City is infected by C.L.U.'s remnant, Tron decides to bring C.L.U. down once and for all. Oneshot Tron Legacy x Nitronic Rush

It had been several days since the de-rezzing of C.L.U., and the Grid was slowly recovering from his reign. Programs which had been converted into drones were steadily regaining their identities, and the ugly pallor which had overtaken the city was steadily clearing up. All except for one program.

Tron stuck to the shadows of Grid City these days. The reputation he had earned while he was Rinzler was something not easily forgotten by the other programs, and try as he might he could not conceal what he was. Everywhere he went he was shunned and abused, more times than not getting his ass handed to him. After one particularly nasty bout, he found himself deep in a dark alleyway behind one of the larger clubs in the area.

_What a shame,_ he thought. _Guess being the best security program on the grid doesnt come with the ability to make everyone forget just how badly you fucked up._

His next chain of thought was interrupted when his comm shard pulsed, indicating a message had arrived. Tron considered dismissing the message when he saw who it was from. The CORE Guardian of Nitronic City, one of the lesser cities on the Grid system had sent this personally. And with high level encryption no less.

_What would a CORE program want with me?_ Tron wondered. He opened the message and received the following:

/START MESSAGE

/FROM: Nitronic City CORE

/TO: Security Program TRON S/N: TRN-0921

/SUBJECT: Nitronic City Initialization and Security

/ENCRYPTION: OMEGA

/Decrypting...Success

/Greetings Tron.

/I am the Guardian of Nitronic City, and in a few days it will be initialized and connected to the Grid.

/I, however, require a security program to patrol the city and to deal with any threats that come up before the city can link to the Grid.

/Despite your previous reputation, I have selected you out of more than thirty thousand possible candidates to fulfill this function.

/Do you accept? Y/N

/END MESSAGE

Tron looked around, checking to see if anyone saw him, and when no one did, he sent a single word back.

/START MESSAGE

/FROM: Security Program TRON S/N: TRN-0921

/TO: Nitronic City CORE

/SUBJECT: RE: Nitronic City Initialization and Security

/ENCRYPTION: None

/Yes.

/END MESSAGE

Almost as soon as he sent it the throaty roar of a car engine sounded at the end of the alleyway, along with a powerful thumping bass beat. Tron got up and walked down to the end of the alleyway, only to be greeted by one of the sleekest cars he had ever seen. The machine was a deep blue, almost black color, with bright blue highlights crossing over and lining the vehicle. Several small hatches were visible at certain points around the car, their purpose remaining unknown to Tron as he admired the vehicle.

The music came to a stop, before the top of the car flipped open, revealing a single comfortable seat, a standard steering wheel and pedal set, and what looked like a joystick on the left side. He quickly vaulted into the car and sat down, noting that the seat conformed to his contours, fitting him like a glove before several straps crossed over his chest and body, snugly securing him to the seat. As the top of the car close and sealed, a line of text appeared on the windshield:

Please insert data disc for user registration_

Tron yanked his data disc from his back, and after finding the appropriate slot, inserted it into the receptacle. Immediately the car's highlights pulsed green before returning to their normal blue hue, and the text changed to:

Reading data disc...Data read

Registering...

Registration complete!

Welcome to the CORE Antivirus Vehicle. Would you like to go through the tutorial? Y/N

Seeing as he didn't want to go into this job not knowing how to drive this mighty fine piece of code, he leaned forward and pressed the Y button on the windshield.

The CAV's engine immediately roared, and Tron found himself pinned to the seat as the G-forces made their presence known. Within seconds the car was over one hundred miles per hour and was heading out of the city on one of the highways.

During the trip towards Nitronic City, the car gave Tron a thorough walkthrough on its finer functions, including boosting and the CAV's apparent ability to fly for limited periods of time. Stunts cooled the car during overheating, and just for the hell of it Tron put it through a triple backflip off one particularly large jump, not feeling the landing as the car slammed back down, throwing sparks everywhere.

It was then and there he decided he loved this car, and could not envision himself driving anything else.

After nearly 2 hours of driving he found himself passing through the outskirts of Nitronic City, at which point the CORE Guardian contacted him again.

/START MESSAGE

/FROM: Nitronic City CORE

/TO: Security Program TRON S/N: TRN-0921

/SUBJECT: (none entered)

/Ah good, you are here. I have already loaded your data into the system so if you have an accident the checkpoint system will prevent your de-resolution. Now, I must prepare for bootup.

/And welcome to Nitronic City.

/END MESSAGE

The side-road he was driving on ended abruptly, sending both him and the CAV falling through the air towards a white track below him. A quick application of the wings granted him a smooth landing, and he stopped the car as the bootup message began passing through the city.

/Booting into Nitronic City

/

/

/RAMDISK driver initialized

/loop: requested (max 64 devices)

/Sending BOOTP requests... OK

/Freeing unused kernel memory. 18000K freed

/Input1: mouse(0xe0700): Dreamcast mouse

/VFS: Mounted root (nfs filesystem)

/

/Start "PrimaryOS", 8, 1

/Searching for PrimaryOS

/Initializing...

/

/Initialization complete

/

/Request to receive message

/Downloading message... Message received!

/Extracting and running...

/Incompatible data received

/

/BRUTE FORCE ATTACK DETECTED

/Attempting to cF9l%hlear out dat47

/Terminal Error det29u%(h4gected 3g9BYT(*Y892

/*%&VBFESystem override IN progress^S^S^S

/CORE corr9FHF*^uption in progress

/[](BG[]^0(:-(8*0G%[]

/UHDG*)(*HHELPHELPHELP(U239h3*^YH

/

now running...

/System override complete

/Beginning instructions for city repurposing

Tron watched in rage as the all too familiar orange-red glow of C.L.U. spread like the plague throughout downtown Nitronic City, infecting everything it touched. Thousands of programs attempted to flee the wave, only to be converted on the spot into drones or de-rezzed in a spray of digital debris. The spread slowed down, but it continued to expand at a slow and relentless pace, catching and converting everything that wasnt already gone.

Wasting no time he jumped back into the CAV and hit the booster, ignoring the last line that got out of the CORE before it was annihilated entirely by C.L.U.:

/...Initializing CORE Antivirus Vehicle

**Abandoned Utopia**

The CAV was built for speed, and it showed as Tron pushed it towards the three hundred MPH mark. Many thousands of programs were fleeing in everything from lightcopters to first generation lightcycles and everything in between. Tron had a hell of a time dodging around, sometimes not reacting fast enough to avoid a program, de-rezzing it through sheer force alone.

In the skies above Nitronic City, hundreds of Lightcraft battled for supremacy, a battle that the allied Lightcraft were rapidly loosing. One of the larger ones took a missile to the portside engine and went spiraling down to the track ahead of Tron, smashing a massive hole through it before exploding. Out of pure reflex he hit the flight button and sailed over the gap, cutting the wings and doing a double right barrel roll to bring the temperatures down. Ahead of him was a checkpoint, and he blew through it going full bore.

All around him the battle was being waged, and the city, normally a cool blue, had shifted to purple, and the drones that weren't busy capturing and converting free programs began taking potshots at him, all swiftly avoided. Before a minute had passed, he streaked through the gate to the next segment of the city.

**Deeper Into the Void**

On the other side of the gate, Tron drove as fast as he could without overheating the car, and rushed towards the first turns of the segment.

Without warning one the skyscrapers nearby, unable to accept the code being fed to it, keeled over and took out the lower part of the track. The CAV barely made the jump up to the upper track, and he had to slow down to let the car cool off. He hit the next checkpoint and gunned it again, and raced along, dodging firewalls and making record jumps. As he neared the end the buildings had begun turning various shades of purple and red, with the corruption spreading to the track itself, mutating it to the point where he had to drive nearly vertical on the walls. With a roar of his boosters, Tron shot through the tunnel into the next area.

**Storm on the Horizon**

The corruption was worse here. The track, once smooth and without defects, now had several ledges he was forced to leap and fly over, with several sections of the track missing entirely, taken out by fallen skyscrapers. The billboards, once covered with various ads, were all now featuring various 'features' of the corrupted CORE, one of which that said that the new CORE was 'Safe' had Tron snorting with laughter even as he dodged everything from missiles to saws embedded in the track. There was nothing 'safe' when C.L.U. was involved. His problems began when a corrupted CORE vehicle began harassing him, trying to run him off the road and flashing him with flamethrowers. He retaliated by forcing it into a firewall, where it exploded in a shower of debris. Ahead, the environment had become almost completely corrupt.

**The Sentinel is Watching**

If half a dozen CORE vehicles trying to run Tron off the road wasnt bad enough, a massive flying machine was guiding twenty foot long red shards at him, most embedding in the track ahead and creating one hell of a mess he had to try and navigate. The machine was also hurling several missiles at him, blasting craters in the track and turning any unfortunate CORE vehicle dumb enough to be too close into flying showers of debris.

As Tron came streaking out of another turn, he came across a vast plain. At the opposite end there were several large towers, all of which suddenly glowed and spat out hundreds of red shards, turning the field into a nearly impassable hell. Completely ignoring the chasing vehicles he dodged and weaved his way through the forest of red death, the flashes of light telling him the other vehicles didn't have the maneuverability of the CAV and were paying for it with their lives.

After clearing the warzone, he immediately ran into a part where he had to fly his way forward and dodge aerial mines while he was at it, all the while avoiding the Sentinel's attacks.

He approached the tunnel to the next area when the Sentinel dropped down in front of him barring his path. Tron rolled over and flew over the top so close the spoiler was scraping against the Sentinel's hull, and while the machine was preoccupied trying to figure out what the fuck just happened, Tron was already streaking away towards the CORE Tower.

**Into the Belly of the Beast**

If the previous area was bad, this was the absolute worst. Immediately out of the tunnel there was a storm of red shards hammering down onto the road, forcing Tron to use all of his skill and reflexes to avoid getting hit. Lasers and more saws in the track further made life difficult. More CORE vehicles, these ones clones of the CAV, came off alternate tracks and began hammering him, trying to force Tron into any and every hazard. Unfortunately for them the CORE neglected to add wings to them, making them crash and burn the moment the jump into the firewall tunnel was made. On the other side, a large number of spiked rollers on the track alongside more lasers saws and firewalls attempted to stop him from reaching his goal. But Tron would not be denied. He streaked ahead into the base of the CORE building and was immediately shifted into the root access tunnel.

**End of a Violent Heart**

Not mines, not a vertiable shitstorm of lasers, not more shards than every previous area combined would stop him. Explosions chased him as mines went off on proximity, while missiles and more shards chased him with murderous intent. Tron rolled, flipped, and did every other pirouette the CAV was capable of to avoid the CORE's defenses. Ahead was the pulsing black heart of the CORE, and no apparent area for him to land and forcefeed it his disc. A line of instructions flashed across the windscreen:

/Fly the CAV into the core to delete the virus

Tron sighed, but steeled himself and gunned it for all the machine was worth. The last thing he thought before the car hit was that he was content with his fate, for it was a fate doing what he did best. Then he thought nothing more as the CAV pancaked against the CORE, blazed brilliantly, and exploded.

Outside, the CORE was screaming in agony as the antivirus program purged it from the system. A line of fire raced up the front of the tower, blowing off the emergency purge vents in blasts of fire, and blew off the eyeplate. The tower cracked under the stress before finally exploding in a blaze of red and blue debris, scattering the remains everywhere. In the middle of it all, a small data disc flew free of the explosion and came back down on the track leading up to the smoldering ruin that was the CORE Guardian. The disc pulsed once before going dark, and as it did the city began slowly restoring itself from the disaster, turning a peaceful blue once more.

_Fin_

This was a plot bunny that jumped me while I was playing the free game Nitronic Rush, and I had to do it because it fucking FITS. The music, the graphics, everything fit. In my opinion it was as if daft punk, Tron Legacy, and Burnout all had a 3-way that resulted in this game. Also, i tried to get this in as a Tron:Legacy x Game x-over but i didnt see the option so it will be straight Tron in the title. Anyways, comments/reviews?


End file.
